Prefer AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION?

[Simon Josefsson]

Hi.  This may mostly be for Bruno, but I believe it is more relevent to
gnulib than gettext, even though it is gettext-related, and maybe others
on this list can provide feedback too.

I got a bug report that suggested using AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=999510

The suggestion boils down to:

-AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.19.3])
+AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION([0.19.8])
+AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.19.6])

Libidn2 (and many other packages) contains:

AM_GNU_GETTEXT([external])
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.19.3])

Reading gettext NEWS suggests to me that 0.19.8 fixed something for
musl, and that this gettext fix is what is needed to build packages
using gettext on that platform.  Am I understanding correct?

If so, my usage of AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.19.3]) seems indeed
problematic because it leads to a too old gettext infrastructure being
pulled in.  It would be nice if my package used the latest available
gettext files during bootstrapping, so I should use this:

AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION([0.19.6])
AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.19.6])

Then assuming the person rebootstrapping libidn2 using a sufficiently
modern gettext (>=0.19.8) will get the acceptable fixes for musl.

Before fixing this, it occured to me that this seems like something that
should be generally true for any project using gettext.  Thoughts?  Why
wouldn't you want gettext to use the latest available infrastructure
files?  The situation seems similar to libtool's M4 handling.

Thus I would prefer to write a 'make syntax-check' rule to catch this,
and suggest that all packages should use AM_GNU_GETTEXT_REQUIRE_VERSION
to get latest gettext files included in them.  Thoughts?

/Simon

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